Method for processing short message and communication terminal

ABSTRACT

A method for processing a short message and a communication terminal are disclosed. The method includes: receiving a short message; extracting schedule information from the short message after determining that the short message is a schedule short message; and importing the schedule information into a schedule table. The inventive solution enables the communication terminal to automatically identify the schedule short message upon receipt of the short message and imports such schedule short message into the schedule table without manually operating by the user, thereby improving the user experience and increasing the inner value of the communication device.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present invention claims priorities to a Chinese Patent ApplicationNo. 200710073423.6 filed on Mar. 1, 2007 and entitled “Method forProcessing Short Message and Communication Terminal” and a InternationalPatent Application No. PCT/CN2008/070256 filed on Feb. 3, 2008 andentitled “Method for Processing Short Message and CommunicationTerminal”, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference intheir entity.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to the field of communicationtechnologies, and more particularly to a technology for a communicationterminal to process a short message.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The short message function of mobile terminals brings the users acommunication approach other than the voice communication approach. Theusers may transmit a text or multimedia message by means of the ShortMessaging Service (SMS), thus the users' requirements may be satisfiedbetter. With the development of telecommunication technologies, fixedterminals are also provided with the short message function, and theshort messaging service has become one of the primary value-addedservices provided by the telecommunication operators.

In a user's daily life, he may often receive various messages fornotifying the schedule of attending a meeting or an activity. Ingeneral, the user can only read the message to memorize the relevantschedule in the information.

The conventional mobile terminals generally have a schedule remindingfunction. The terminal reminds the user upon the arrival of a scheduledtime. When receiving a schedule-related short message, if the user wantsto place the schedule information in a schedule table within thecommunication terminal, he has to reenter the schedule informationaccording to the contents of the short message. However, during theimplementation of the present invention, the inventor finds afterresearch that in the above prior art, the user can't directly save aschedule-related short message into the schedule table of the terminalupon receipt of the short message, but has to set the schedule tableaccording to the contents of the short message.

Among the conventional technical solutions, there is also a solutionwhich integrates the schedule function with the short message function.In a mobile terminal with the short message function and the schedulefunction, when sending a schedule-related short message, the mobileterminal needs to convert a schedule data format into a short messagedata format specific to the recording of the schedule and then send theshort message. When receiving a schedule-related short message, themobile terminal needs to convert the short message data format specificto the recording of the schedule into the schedule format and thenrecords the schedule. During the implementation of the presentinvention, the inventor finds after research that in the above priorart, the transmission of schedule information between users requires theterminals to support the same format, resulting in a limitation inapplication.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Some embodiments of the present invention provide a method forprocessing a short message and a communication terminal, which allow theshort message received by a communication terminal to be directlyimported into a schedule table of the communication terminal.

To achieve the above objection, the embodiments of the present inventionemploy the following technical solutions.

A method for processing a short message is provided. The methodincludes: receiving a short message, extracting schedule information inthe short message after determining that this short message is aschedule short message, and importing the schedule information into aschedule table.

A communication terminal is also provided. The communication terminalincludes a short message receiving and sending module, a received shortmessage storage module and a schedule table module. The communicationterminal further includes: a schedule short message determining module,adapted to receive a short message transferred by the short messagereceiving and sending module, determine whether the short message is aschedule short message, and extract schedule information from theschedule short message; and a schedule table import interface module,adapted to receive the schedule information transferred by the scheduleshort message determining module and import the schedule informationinto the schedule table module.

The communication terminal according to some embodiments of the presentinvention obtains and analyzes the text of the short message. When it isdetermined that the short message is a schedule short message, thecommunication terminal obtains the schedule information from the shortmessage and imports the schedule information into the schedule table ofthe communication terminal. In this way, the communication terminal mayidentify the schedule short message automatically upon receipt of theshort message and import the schedule short message into the scheduletable automatically, without manually operating and setting the scheduletable by the user according to the text of the schedule short message orperforming a format conversion on the schedule short message. Someembodiments of the present invention may provide the user of thecommunication terminal with good user experience and increase the innervalue of the communication device.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a flow chart illustrating a method according to an embodimentof the present invention; and

FIG. 2 is a schematic structure diagram illustrating a communicationterminal according to an embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS AND THE PRESENTLY PREFERREDEMBODIMENTS

Some embodiments of the present invention provide a method forprocessing a short message and a communication terminal. Upon receipt ofa short message, the communication terminal obtains and analyzes thetext of the short message to determine whether the short message is aschedule short message. If it is determined that the short message is aschedule short message, the communication terminal obtains scheduleinformation from the short message and imports the schedule informationinto a schedule table of the communication terminal.

The present invention is detailed in conjunction with the followingembodiments and accompanying drawings to make the object, solutions andadvantages of the present invention more apparent. It should beappreciated that the specific embodiments are described herein only toexplain but not to limit the present invention.

FIG. 1 shows a flow chart of a method according to an embodiment of thepresent invention. The method includes the following processes.

1: A terminal obtains text of a short message upon receipt of the shortmessage.

2: The terminal performs a characteristic analysis on the text of theshort message and obtains a matching value for the short message.

Specifically, the terminal compares the received short message with apredefined template to perform the characteristic analysis. Thepredefined template may be a sentence pattern template, a number or atime format, and the like. The following method may be used to obtainthe matching value of the short message.

Firstly, the terminal performs a sentence pattern analysis on thereceived short message. The terminal matches the text of the shortmessage with daily used schedule sentence patterns such as “Please go toXXX to attend XXX on XXX”, “XXX is arranged to be XXX at XXX on time”,“XXX is to be held on XXX at XXX”, “XXX, please XXX on time, XXX addressXXX”, “Meeting: XXXX Address: XXX”, “XXX will be hold at XXX-XXX”, and“XXX don't forget to attend to XXX at XXX”. The various sentencepatterns each are provided with a matching value.

In addition, a part-of-speech matching check may be set for the content“XXX” in the sentence patterns. If the “XXX” in the sentence patterns isa noun and that in the text of the short message is also a noun, thematching value is increased according to a preset deviation matchingtolerance, and otherwise the matching value is decreased.

For instance, the matching value of the sentence pattern “Please go toXXX on XXX to attend XXX” may be set as 50. The first XXX should be alocation name, the second XXX should be a time, and the third XXX shouldbe a noun with a definitive word such as “XXX meeting”, “XXX forum” and“XXX discussion”. The deviation matching tolerance of each word is setas 10.

If the sentence pattern of the received short message is matched withthe above template, an initial matching value 50 is obtained. Then thepart-of-speech matching is performed. If one of the three XXXs accordswith a preset part-of-speech, the matching value is increased by 10.Otherwise, the matching value is decreased by 10.

After the sentence pattern analysis, a number match may be performed tofurther improve the matching accuracy. The user may pre-define thatshort messages from some numbers are schedule short messages by default,or the user may also define that short messages from some numbers areschedule short messages at a percent of X by default. According to thesedefinitions, the value of the percent of X (X is greater than or equalto 0, and less than 100) is mapped to a deviation matching value.

For instance, if it is obtained by preset or history statistics that 30%of the short messages sent from an incoming call number are scheduleshort messages, and the matching share for the incoming call number isset as 60, then 18 (60*30%) is taken as the deviation matching value andadded to the initial matching value.

For example, if a text short message “Please go to Hangzhou on Jan. 1,2006 to attend the year-end summary conference” is sent from13888888888, the following may be obtained according to the above presetvalues: in the sentence pattern match, the matching value is 50; in thefirst XXX match, the matching value is 60; in the second XXX match, thematching value is 70; in the third XXX match, the matching value is 80;assuming that 1% of the short messages sent from 13888888888 areschedule short messages, then the modified matching value is 80.6.

After a matching value is obtained through the sentence pattern analysisand the number match, to further improve the accuracy of the match, thetime contained in the short message may be obtained and various timeformats such as “2006-12-6”, “Dec. 5, 2006”, “2006/12/05”, “05/12/2006”,“Dec. 5, 2006”, “5-12-2006”, “forty past eight”, “8:40”, “eight forty”,“AM 8:40” may be analyzed by the conventional regular text matchingapproach.

For instance, if a received short message contains an expression“2006-12-12”, the regular text matching approach may be used todetermine whether this expression represents a time. The expression“2006-12-12” may be preliminarily determined as a time according to oneof the predefined matching rules, i.e. “four digits (1900-2500)-one ortwo digits (1-12)-one or two digits (0-31)”.

If it is determined that the short message contains a time, a presetdeviation matching value may be further added to the above matchingvalue. If it is failed to obtain a time, the above matching value isdecreased by a preset deviation matching value. After these operations,a final matching value may be obtained.

In an embodiment of the present invention, firstly the sentence patternmatch is performed to obtain a matching value, and then thepart-of-speech match, the time format match and the match of the numbersending the short message are performed to adjust the obtained matchingvalue. In practical application of the solution according to someembodiments, the sentence pattern match, the time format match and thematch of the number sending the short message may be used separately orin any combination thereof.

The above sentence pattern match, number match and time format match maybe implemented by an intelligent adaptive method, and the matchingvalues of the sentence pattern templates, the deviation matching valuefor the part-of-speech match and the minimum matching tolerance forschedule short message may be adjusted dynamically according to thefeedback of the user.

actual text of the short message to verify the determining result. Forexample, if it is determined that the received short message in acertain sentence pattern is a schedule short message while the shortmessage is actually not a schedule short message, the user may properlydecrease the matching value or deviation matching value of this sentencepattern in the sentence pattern analysis on the basis of the fact, so asto make a dynamic adjustment to the above determining procedure.

3: Whether the short message meets a minimum matching requirement or notis determined. If meeting the requirement, the short message is aschedule short message and the procedure forwards to process 4.Otherwise the procedure forwards to process 7.

Specifically; the determining process includes the followingsub-processes. The final matching value obtained in process 3 iscompared with a preset minimum matching value for schedule shortmessage. If the final matching value is greater than or equal to theminimum matching value, it is determined that the short message is aschedule short message, while if the final matching value is less thanthe minimum matching value, it is determined that the short message isnot a schedule short message.

If the minimum matching value is preset as 60, a short message with afinal matching value greater than or equal to 60 is a schedule shortmessage and the one with a final matching value less than 60 is not aschedule short message. The final matching value of the short message inprocess 3 is 80.6 regardless of the result of the time format match,therefore it may be determined that this is a schedule short message.

4: The terminal prompts the user whether to import or not. If the userchooses to import, the process forwards to process 5. Otherwise, theprocess forwards to process 7.

5: The terminal obtains the time of the schedule in the text of theshort message. According to one embodiment of the present invention, thetime of the schedule in a short message may be obtained by the terminalimmediately after the terminal determines that this short message is aschedule short message, without prompting the user whether to import ornot.

6: The terminal imports the obtained time of the schedule into aschedule table of the terminal, and imports the short message into theschedule table as contents of the schedule. The importing may beperformed manually by the user or automatically by the terminal.

For instance, if the short message reads “Please go to Hangzhou on2006-12-12 to attend the annual work conference”, the time “2006-12-127”and the text “Please go to Hangzhou on 2006-12-12 to attend the annualwork conference” are obtain and imported into the schedule table,thereby creating a schedule record in the schedule table.

During the process of importing manually by the user, the user may alsoedit or modify the extracted time and contents of the schedule accordingto his own requirements and import the edited or modified contents intothe schedule table.

The obtaining of time as an example of the obtaining of the scheduleinformation is described in this embodiment. However, in otherembodiments, elements of the schedule such as time, location, scheduletitle and schedule contents may be extracted and imported into theschedule table of the terminal respectively.

7: The procedure proceeds to a normal short message processingprocedure. In other words, the short message is sent to a received shortmessage storage module to be stored.

It may be appreciated by an ordinary skilled person in the art that allor portions of the processes in the method according to the aboveembodiment may be implemented by instructing related hardware via aprogram. The program may be stored in a computer-readable storage mediumsuch as a ROM/RAM, a diskette or a compact disc.

FIG. 2 shows a schematic structure diagram of a communication terminalaccording to an embodiment of the present invention. The communicationterminal includes a short message sending and receiving module, aschedule short message determining module, a schedule import interfacemodule, a schedule table module and a received short message storagemodule.

The short message sending and receiving module is configured to receiveand send a short message, and transfer the received short message to theschedule short message determining module.

The schedule short message determining module is configured to receivethe short message and determine whether the short message is a scheduleshort message or not. If determining that the short message is aschedule short message, the schedule short message determining moduletriggers the schedule import interface module to process the shortmessage. Otherwise, it triggers the received short message storagemodule to process the short message.

The schedule import interface module is configured to import the shortmessage into the schedule table module for storing.

The received short message storage module is adapted to store the shortmessage.

The schedule short message determining module stores a sentence patternfor schedule short messages. When determining whether a short message isa schedule short message or not, the schedule short message determiningmodule matches the sentence pattern of the text of the short messagewith the schedule sentence pattern by a sentence pattern analysisapproach to obtain a matching value. If the accuracy of the match isrequired to be further improved, the schedule short message determiningmodule may perform operations including a part-of-speech match, a numbermatch and a time format match to obtain a modified matching value as afinal matching value, and then compare the final matching value with apreset minimum matching requirement. If the final matching value meetsthe minimum matching requirement, the schedule short message determiningmodule determines that the short message is a schedule short message.Otherwise, the schedule short message determining module processes theshort message as an ordinary short message.

As described above, the embodiments of the present invention describe amethod for processing a short message and a communication terminal. Thecommunication terminal analyzes the obtained the text of the shortmessage to determine whether the short message is a schedule shortmessage. When it is determined that the short message is a scheduleshort message, the communication terminal obtains the scheduleinformation from the schedule short message and imports the scheduleinformation into the schedule table of the terminal. In this way, thecommunication terminal is capable of identifying the schedule shortmessage automatically upon receipt of the short message and imports theschedule short message into the schedule table automatically, withoutmanually setting the schedule table by the user according to the text ofthe schedule short message. This may provide a good user experience tothe user of the communication terminal and increase the inner value ofthe communication device. Moreover, the determining of the short messagetype and the determining of the importing after receiving the shortmessage may be performed directly by the communication terminal, withoutperforming a format conversion or operating annually by the user,thereby facilitating the user to use this function and avoidinglimitation of the terminal type.

The preferred embodiments have been described above to explain but notlimit the present invention. Any modifications, equivalent alternationsand improvements to the present invention within the spirit andprinciple of the present invention should be included in the scope ofthe present invention.

1. A method for processing a short message, comprising: receiving ashort message; obtaining text from the short message; matching the textof the short message with daily used schedule sentence patterns, whereineach of the daily used schedule sentence patterns are provided with amatching value; obtaining the matching value according to a matchingresult; matching a part-of-speech of certain content in the daily usedsentence patterns with text content in the short message, wherein alocation of the certain content in the daily used sentence patterns issame as a location of the text content in the short message; increasingthe matching value to obtain a final matching value if thepart-of-speech of the certain content in the daily used sentencepatterns is same as the part-of-speech of the text content in the shortmessage; or decreasing the matching value to obtain a final matchingvalue if the part-of-speech of the certain content in the daily usedsentence patterns is different from the part-of-speech of the textcontent in the short message; comparing the final matching value with apreset minimum matching requirement to determine whether the shortmessage is a schedule short message; determining that the short messageis a schedule short message if the final matching value matches theminimum matching requirement, and obtaining schedule information fromthe short message; and importing the schedule information into aschedule table.
 2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:matching a number sending the short message with a preset number; andadjusting the matching value according to a result of the matching. 3.The method according to claim 1, further comprising: performing a timeformat match on the text contents, and adjusting the matching valueaccording to a result of the time format matching.
 4. The methodaccording to claim 1, wherein the obtaining the schedule information inthe short message and importing the schedule information into theschedule table comprises: obtaining a time in the text of the shortmessage; and importing the obtained time into the schedule table as atime of the schedule and importing the text of the short message intothe schedule table as contents of the schedule.
 5. The method accordingto claim 4, further comprising: modifying the obtained time and/orcontents of the schedule prior to importing the time and/or contents ofthe schedule into the schedule table.
 6. The method according to claim 1further comprising: modifying the matching value according to feedbackfrom a user.
 7. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:modifying the matching value according to feedback from a user.
 8. Acommunication terminal, comprising: a short message receiving andsending module; a received short message storage module and a scheduletable module; a schedule short message determining module, configuredto: receive a short message transferred by the short message receivingmodule, obtain text from the short message, match the text of the shortmessage with daily used schedule sentence patterns, obtain a matchingvalue according to a matching result, match a part-of-speech of certaincontent in the daily used schedule sentence patterns with text contentin the short message, increase the matching value to obtain a finalmatching value if the part-of-speech of certain content in the dailyused schedule sentence patterns is same as the part-of-speech of textcontent in the short message or decrease matching value; obtain a finalmatching value if the part-of-speech of certain content in the dailyused schedule sentence patterns is different from the part-of-speech oftext content in the short message, compare the final matching value witha preset minimum matching requirement to determine whether the shortmessage is a schedule short message based on whether the final matchingvalue meets the minimum matching requirement, wherein each of the dailyused schedule sentence patterns are provided with a matching value andthe location of the certain content in the sentence patterns is samewith the location of the text content in the short message; a sendingmodule, determine that the short message is a schedule short message ifthe final matching value matches the minimum matching requirement, andobtain schedule information from the schedule short message; and aschedule table import interface module, configured to receive theschedule information transferred by the schedule short messagedetermining module and import the schedule information into the scheduletable module.
 9. A computer-readable medium having instruction storedthereon which, when operated in a system, cause the system to implementa method for processing a short message, the method comprising:receiving a short message; obtaining text from the short message;matching the text of the short message with daily used schedule sentencepatterns, wherein each of the daily used sentence patterns is providedwith a matching value; obtaining the matching value according to amatching result; matching a part-of-speech of certain content in thedaily used sentence patterns with text content in the short message,wherein a location of the certain content in the sentence patterns issame as a location of the text content in the short message; increasingthe matching value to obtain a final matching value if thepart-of-speech of certain content in the daily used sentence patterns issame as the part-of-speech of text content in the short message; ordecreasing the matching value obtain a final matching value if thepart-of-speech of certain content in the daily used sentence patterns isdifferent from the part-of-speech of text content in the short message;comparing the final matching value with a preset minimum matchingrequirement to determining whether the short message is a schedule shortmessage; determining that the short message is a schedule short messageif the final matching value meets the minimum matching requirement, andobtaining schedule information from the short message; and importing theschedule information into a schedule table.
 10. A communicationterminal, being capable of: receiving a short message; obtaining textfrom the short message; matching the text of the short message withdaily used schedule sentence patterns, wherein each of the daily usedsentence patterns is provided with a matching value; obtaining thematching value according to a matching result; matching a part-of-speechof certain content in the daily used sentence patterns with text contentin the short message, wherein a location of the certain content in thedaily used sentence patterns is same as a location of the text contentin the short message; increasing the matching value to obtain a finalmatching value if the part-of-speech of certain content in the dailyused sentence patterns is same as the part-of-speech of text content inthe short message; or decreasing the matching value to obtain a finalmatching value if the part-of-speech of certain content in the dailyused sentence patterns is different from the part-of-speech of textcontent in the short message; comparing the final matching value with apreset minimum matching requirement to determine whether the shortmessage is a schedule short message; determining that the short messageis a schedule short message if the final matching value meets theminimum matching requirement, and obtaining schedule information fromthe short message; and importing the schedule information into aschedule table.
 11. The communication terminal according to claim 10,capable of: matching a number sending the short message with a presetnumber; and adjusting the matching value according to a result of thematching.
 12. The communication terminal according to claim 10, capableof: performing a time format match on the text contents, and adjustingthe matching value according to a result of the time format matching.13. The communication terminal according to claim 10, capable of:obtaining a time from the text of the short message; and importing theobtained time into the schedule table as a time of the schedule andimporting the text of the short message into the schedule table ascontents of the schedule.